I don’t want to watch anymore. I’m watched out. Another police shooting, another unnecessary and unprovoked killing, another panicky cop’s lethal mistake. In Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Only, wait, no, that’s not all; turns out there was another one a few hours later, in St. Paul, Minnesota. And so we add two more names to the list, two more African American men executed without cause or merit. Philando Castile. Michael Brown. Eric Garner. Tamir Rice. Dontre Hamilton. John Crawford. Ezell Ford. Dante Parker. Akai Gurley. Rumain Brisbane. Jerame Reid. Eric Harris. Walter Scott. Freddie Gray. Alton Sterling.

And yes, there were cops killed in Dallas last night. And that was tragic and awful and unnecessary too. And they go on the list too.  Absolutely. Brent Thompson. Patrick Zamarripa. There were three others; as of this writing, their names haven’t been released. But yes, police work is dangerous. I know a few cops, and I know the prayers their families offer every shift they work. “Please, let him come home safely. Please protect her. Please, not today.”

But the movement is called, rightly and appropriately, Black Lives Matter. That’s what needs to be said, repeated, insisted upon. Because that’s what, apparently, we in the white community don’t simply take for granted.

And I feel helpless, impotent, infuriated and heartsick. Mourning doesn’t seem to be enough. Posting and blogging and tweeting doesn’t make a difference. I’m an old, fat, sick white dude. I got nothing. Well, that’s not entirely true. I do have a slight glimmering of a few somethings.

I don’t know much about the way police officers are trained. But I do know that a lot of police departments–Las Vegas, Seattle, New York–have implemented de-escalation training, a shift of emphasis from ‘control the situation’ to ‘calm the situation down,’ less confrontational, and that the results have been substantial decreases in violence, and in police shootings.

I don’t know all that much about gun laws, in part because I don’t know much about guns. Since Heller, we have to accept that, at least for now, the 2nd Amendment is understood to mean that private citizens have a constitutional right to own firearms. I think Heller‘s a foolish decision, wrongly decided. But it still allows the state to prohibit the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, it allows for laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in places like schools and government buildings, and it permits all kinds of laws imposing conditions on the sale of guns, or banning “dangerous or unusual” weapons. There are, in other words, a whole bunch of gun-restricting regulations that Congress could pass. Also, an Australian-style national gun buy-back program is constitutionally permissible.

I don’t know how to get rid of most Americans’ guns. I don’t think there’s much question that the fact that American gun ownership is off-the-charts internationally, and the fact that American gun deaths are likewise out of control are correlated. We’re a heavily armed people. We don’t need to be. When cops go out to maintain public order, they’re obviously on edge, knowing how heavily armed the populace is. Cops are human, cops are scared, and yes, cops make mistakes. We can support the police, and also hold policing to a higher standard. Those ideals are not incompatible.

I don’t know how to solve the problem of racism. I do know that we’re fighting a whole of history here, and that the fact that black people face less legal discrimination now than they did when I was a kid does not mean that the black community hasn’t been profoundly and significantly harmed. Larry Wilmore last night said that his home, in Pasadena, is also home to a significant Armenian community. He has lots of Armenian friends. But, he said, if you’re with them and you mention Turkey, the reaction is immediate, angry and harsh. It’s been a hundred years since the Turkish massacre of Armenians, but feelings are still raw. Why, then, should we assume that centuries of systemic violence and hatred directed towards blacks, by whites, in America, hasn’t been similarly damaging and hurtful, and with lingering, residual effects?

I don’t know how to change the political direction of this country, how to combat the effects of institutional racism, or how to reverse the tide of violence. But I do know this: nothing will happen for good or for ill unless millennials vote.

This is really important. And it’s not just about gun violence, or racism, or Black Lives Matter. It’s about climate change. It’s about paying for college. It’s about health care. There are a huge variety of life-or-death issues that have political ramifications and political solutions. And if you’re reading this, and you’re 18-35, you probably know the statistics on this as well as I do.

The General Social Survey, one of the most respected national surveys shows that millennials are, in fact, very politically engaged. You engage in political discussions on the internet. You post political views on social media. You’re very likely to attend a rally or a protest. That’s all great. And it means nothing–absolutely nothing–if you don’t vote. And you don’t. Less than 20% of you vote in local or state elections, and less than 40% in Presidential years.

Think about your grandparents. Grumpy old gramps, who watches Fox News all day, and yells at kids who cross his lawn, and whose favorite topics of conversation are his health and what a terrible President Obama is. I mean, you love him to death, but you don’t take him all that seriously, do you? Well, he has a much greater say on what’s going to happen in this country than you do. Because he votes. So does Grandma. Every election, without fail.

You remember the Michael Brown shooting? Remember all the protests, all the anger, all the people who showed up to express their outrage over that shooting? When you read about Ferguson, and how much more likely black residents of the town were to be pulled over and fined, and how essential those fines were to the city’s finances, and how few Ferguson cops were African-American, well, it was disgraceful, and infuriating, and the anger of the protesters seemed completely justified. And someone decided to do something about; set up a voter registration booth right there in the middle of the protests. If you were a Ferguson resident, and African-American, well, there was your chance to make a change, vote out an incompetent mayor and replace the police chief. Guess how many new voters were registered in Ferguson Missouri. Just take a stab at it.

128. One hundred. And twenty eight.

And I thought of Fannie Lou Hamer, testifying in 1964 about how badly she was beaten in Mississippi by the local sheriffs, for the crime of trying to register to vote. Because, as she put it, “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired. We want a change! We want a change in this society in America!”

Well, so do I. And I don’t know how to solve this. I don’t know who to blame, or what solutions to try. But I do know this: we have to try. Because this America, this violent and racially charged and furious America does not represent who I want to be, or who you want to be, or who we want to be together.

I believe, like Kendrick Lamar, “if God got us then we gon be alright.” I pray every night for peace, for our nation’s secular salvation. And then I listen to that still small voice and I realize what He’s saying. He gave us hands to work, to help our brothers and sisters. And we gave us minds, to think. And those hands and those minds have to work together. And we start by voting. Every election: vote. That’s all I got, and all I know.

 

 

 

I pray every night for peace, for our nation’s secular salvation. And then I listen to that still small voice and I realize what He’s saying. He gave us hands to work, to help our brothers and sisters. And we gave us minds, to think. And those hands and those minds have to work together. And we start by voting. Every election: vote.